I wear LaCrosse rubber boots and love them. That rubber smell will go away after a few months. The real benefit to rubber over say cordura and leather is that rubber does not retain other smells. Now, I still wait to put my boots on until I am parked to hunt and take them off when I'm done. You can rinse them off with a water hose and get most anything off of them. Take your old leather or cordura boots and try to clean a smell off of them. It's much harder. In the long run rubber boots for short walk hunting is the way to go.